The Triumph of Race
The Triumph of Race
I
IT is a familiar fact that offspring resemble their parents on the whole, but differ from them in details. For example, the child of a human being is always another, but never an exactly similar, human being.
These differences in detail are of two sorts,inbornandacquired. Inborn or innate differences arise “by nature”; the child is inherently unlike the parent—taller or shorter, fairer or darker, and so forth. Acquired differences, on the other hand, are due to the conditions under which parents and children have lived. Thus, owing to better or worse surroundings, the child may develop better or worse than the parent and so be taller or shorter, or a greater exposure to weather may render him darker or fairer.
Things We Cannot Inherit
It was formerly believed by scientific men, and is still believed by the public, that traits acquired by the parent tended to be inherited by the child—that is, reproduced as inborn traits. Thus it was supposed that if a man were made strong by exercise, or injured by accident, his child would tend to inherit, in some degree at least, the acquired benefit or injury, and as a result be naturally stronger or more defective than the parent was at the start.
Acquired Traits not Hereditary
But very prolonged and careful investigation has proved that this is certainly an error. For example, though for æons human beings have been learning to speak and walk, and make a multitude of other acquirements, yet none of these are ever inherited. In fact, owing to the evolution of memory and the retrogression of instinct, man, of all animals, acquires the most and inherits the least. Every child has to begin afresh and learn what its ancestors learnt; all are born ignorant; none speak or walk “naturally.” Each starts where the parent began, not where he left off. The parental traits, if reproduced at all, are always of the same kind in the child as in the parents, and appear in the same way. That is, the inborn traits of the parent are always inborn in the offspring; the acquired traits are never anything but acquirements resulting from the same causes as they did in the parent. In brief, the acquirements of the parent are never transmuted into inborn characteristics in the child. They are never inherited. It is admitted on all hands that inborn differences—variations, as they are termed technically—tend to be inherited.
Thus, if the parent is naturally darker than the grandparent, the child tends in colour to resemble the former more than the latter. Since the child may vary from the parent in the same direction as the latter varied from the grandparent, these inborn differences may be accentuated in subsequent generations. It is due to this fact that plant and animal breeders have improved domesticated species. They are able to benefit the individual by improving his surroundings, but the race they can improve only by breeding from the best. In other words, when they have the latter end in view, they must build on natural variations, not on acquirements.
A Great Problem of ScienceDifferences among Kindred
One of the most important problems in the whole range of science is the question as to what causes offspring to differ in this inborn, natural way from their parents. Many theories have been formulated, and the subject is still to some extent under discussion; but the evidence is overwhelming that variations—natural differences—are not generally caused, as most people believe, by anything that happens to the parent before the birth of the child, but are “spontaneous.” The subject is a large and intricate one, and we have not space to discuss it at length. One or two facts, however, may be mentioned. The members of a litter of puppies, kittens, or pigs, may differ naturally amongst themselves and from their parentsin all sorts of ways—in colour, shape, size, hairiness, disposition, and so on. One puppy may present points of resemblance to the father, another to the mother, a third to some ancestor, while a fourth may be unlike any of its predecessors. Since, practically speaking, the puppies were all conditioned alike before birth, it is evident that these great differences must be “spontaneous.” They cannot have been caused by such things as the good or ill health of the parents, their food, or the life they led, for, in that case, the puppies would all have varied in the same way.
Again, malaria is, in effect, a universal disease on the West Coast of Africa. Individuals differ naturally in their powers of resisting it, some taking it lightly and some severely; but almost every negro suffers, and many children perish of it. If the sufferings of the parents caused children to be born weaker “by nature,” it is evident that every individual would start life inferior to his predecessor at the start, and the race would thus degenerate and ultimately become extinct. On the other hand, if variations are “spontaneous,” if, quite unaffected by the sufferings of the parents, some children are born naturally different, naturally more or less resistant to malaria than their predecessors, it is plain that the weeding out of the unfittest, the weak against the disease, would ultimately make the race resistant to it. In the one case the race would drift to destruction; in the other it would undergo protective evolution. Obviously, the latter is what has happened. Negroes show no signs of any kind of degeneration, but they are of all races the most resistant to malaria.
Suffering Produces Strength
Similarly, Englishmen who have been much exposed to consumption and measles, natives of India who have been much afflicted by enteric fever and dysentery, Esquimaux who have suffered from cold, Arabs who have endured heat, Chinamen and Jews who have long dwelt under that complex of ill conditions found in slums and ghettos, are none of them degenerate, but, on the contrary, have become resistant, each race to its own particular ill-conditions in proportion to its sufferings in the past. In fact, it may be laid down as a general rule that races strengthen only when exposed to ill conditions, and deteriorate only when the conditions are so favourable that the unfit are not eliminated. An example of the latter is seen when prize breeds of animals and plants, however well nourished and cared for, are no longer bred with care. It follows that races, if not exterminated, are not injured but strengthened by ill conditions, by the elimination of the unfittest, as gold is refined by fire.
Survival of the Fittest
It is a remarkable fact that many people are able to accomplish the surprising feat of knowing that races have become inured to ill conditions, and of believing at the same time that the offspring of people exposed to such conditions tend, as a rule, to be degenerate. It is as if they believed that two and two make four, and two more six, but that if a great number of two’s are added together the total result is a minus quantity. Obviously the two beliefs are incompatible. A race cannot degenerate in every generation and yet emerge in the end strengthened from the struggle. The confusion has arisen because the two diametrically opposite propositions are seldom considered together, and in part also from a mistaken interpretation of what is observed in such situations as the slums of cities. Here puny children are seen to be derived from puny parents, and it is assumed that the children are degenerate because the parents have suffered.
As a fact we have no reason to doubt that the children are affected in precisely the same way as the parents. On the one hand, slums are sinks into which descend people naturally inferior, people who have varied spontaneously from their ancestors in such a way as to be feeble, physically or mentally, and who reproduce their like. On the other hand, the conditions are such that even the naturally strong, both parents and children, develop badly. Doubtless, owing to the constant elimination of the unfit, the latter—the naturally strong—are by far the more numerous. There is nothing to show that, if they were removed in early life to better surroundings, they would not develop just as well as the offspring of country folk.
An Evolution that has now Ceased
The fact that races grow resistant to the ill conditions to which they are exposed, and degenerate when placed under particularly good conditions, is decisive proof that offspring are not, as a rule, innately affected by the surroundings of their parents. No doubt exceptions occur, butthese are amongst the most unfit, and the race is soon purged of them. Thus European dogs are said to degenerate when taken to India. But the existence of old-established native races of dogs is proof that the degenerative process is not perpetual. Malaria and many other ill conditions are quite normal parts of the environment of the races exposed to them, and have been so for thousands of years. Except for occasional unfavourable variations, which are quickly eliminated, they have long purged the races of those strains that tended to become degenerate under their influence.
After man—through the evolution of the structures and faculties which distinguish him from the lower animals, the large brain, with its accompanying memory, the organs of speech, the hand, the erect attitude—had achieved the conquest of the earth, his selection and evolution along the ancestral lines gradually diminished, and has now almost ceased. At the present day clever, strong, or active people do not on the average have an appreciably more numerous progeny than those who are not exceptionally endowed. No modern race is intellectually superior to the Greeks who flourished more than two thousand years ago. The brains, the hands, the organs of speech, the erect attitude, have not altered. Apparently nothing more than traditional knowledge has improved.
The gradual accumulation of traditional knowledge during prehistoric times enabled man to cultivate animals and plants, and so to increase and regulate his supply of food. As a consequence his numbers multiplied. Areas of country which formerly supported only a few wandering hunters now afforded sustenance to growing multitudes of agriculturists, who often dwelt together for mutual protection in villages. Commerce followed agriculture, towns and cities arose, and civilisation dawned.
Civilisation implies a dense and settled community, protected from most of the dangers which beset wild animals, and in which, therefore, the elimination of the unfit is no longer of the kind that weeded out the brute and the utter savage. Some sort of elimination does occur, however, for, even in the most civilised states, multitudes of people perish in youth, before they have contributed their full quota of offspring to the race.
Natural Selection at Work
We have excellent opportunities of studying this elimination and noting whether it results in evolution. Indeed, man presents the only instance in Nature in which we are able to observe natural selection actually at work. In all modern states statistics are compiled which set out the causes of death, the mortality from each cause, and the ages of its victims. By comparing races which have been much afflicted by this or that cause of mortality with races that have been little or not at all affected, we are able to ascertain the resulting racial change, if any. As may be noted by everyone,civilised people perish, with rare exceptions, of disease.
Resistance of Races to Disease
W
WE have just seen that every race is resistant to every disease precisely in proportion to its past experience of it. It follows that the evolution of civilised peoples is against disease. If any other kind of evolution is now occurring, no one as yet has been able to demonstrate it, though many unproved guesses have been made. Mere alterations in traditional knowledge is not evolution. Children may derive it just as well from other people as from their parents.
The vast majority of deaths from disease are of zymotic origin. A zymotic or microbic disease is caused by the entrance into the body of minute animals or plants (microbes), which find their nutriment there. There are many species of microbes, each disease being due to one. Some species are mainly air-borne, and infect through the breath; others are water-borne; others earth-borne; yet others insect-borne; while a few pass by actual contact from an infected to a healthy person.
The Way Disease is Spread
Some diseases—for example, consumption and leprosy—are of indefinite but always prolonged duration; others, like measles, are short and sharp. In the case of the latter, for reasons we need not dwell on here, the body after an attack becomes, for a longer or shorter time, an unfit habitation for the microbes of that particularspecies. The rapid recovery which occurs in these “acute” diseases, indeed, implies the banishment of the microbes. The air-borne diseases—measles, influenza, smallpox, and the like, all of that acute type which confers immunity against subsequent attacks—are very infective, spreading through a susceptible population with great rapidity. Under favourable conditions the water-borne diseases also—cholera, dysentery, enteric fever, and the like—may spread very quickly. Chief amongst the earth-borne diseases is consumption. It is contracted chiefly in such dark, ill-ventilated, and crowded houses as are built by the inhabitants of cold and temperate climates.
The disease-producing microbes are an infinitesimal proportion of the total number of bacterial and protozoan species. In Nature it is not easy to find a speck of earth or a drop of water from which these minute living beings are absent. All decay, by means of which the dead bodies of plants and animals are returned to the soil, is due to them.
The Immense Antiquity of Diseases
It is a safe assumption that the microbes of human diseases have evolved from non-parasitic species. The niche they now occupy in Nature is the human body. Two things formed essential parts of this evolution—first, the microbes became capable of existing and multiplying for a shorter or longer period in the body; secondly, they evolved means of passing from one living body to another. The latter must have been the more difficult process. Under favourable circumstances several species of microbes—for example, those of putrefaction, which are ordinarily non-parasitic—are capable of entering the human body and becoming virulent; but, since they cannot secure passage from one individual to another, they die out, and their virulence is lost. Historical evidence renders it probable that all known human diseases are of immense antiquity, the so-called new diseases being merely newly-observed diseases. It appears probable, therefore, that, owing to constant persecution by disease, by continued survival of the fittest, humanity has grown so resistant that no species of microbe which has not undergone concurrent evolution is now able to establish itself as a regular parasite.
Obviously, since the microbes of human diseases draw their nutritive supplies from man, they cannot persist except amongst populations so crowded that they are able to pass from one individual to another in unending succession. When the succession fails, the disease dies out, and is not renewed, except from foreign sources. Microbic disease is never contracted in desert places far from human settlements, and even in modern times it is comparatively rare amongst nomadic tribes, and, seemingly, was quite unknown in Arctic regions and in many Pacific islands before its introduction by Europeans. These maladies, therefore, must have made their appearance only after men had peopled certain regions in considerable numbers.
Progress of Sanitary Science
On the other hand, we have no certain evidence that any well-established parasitic disease has ever completely died out. The chances are all against such an occurrence in the past. When once established as parasites, the microbes, owing to the constant growth of human population, found a constantly augmented food supply, and therefore constantly increased opportunities of reaching fresh fields of conquest. Sanitary science is still in its infancy. Preventive measures, and perhaps other agencies, have caused the disappearance of leprosy from several countries, but it is still prevalent in many quarters of the globe. Contagious diseases have spread very widely. Earth and air borne diseases have become endemic instead of merely epidemic. Consumption is always with us, and almost every child contracts measles, whooping-cough, chicken-pox, and common cold. Small-pox has been replaced by vaccination, which is merely modified small-pox. Malaria has spread but little during the historic epoch, but only because its microbes were already present in almost every place where the mosquitoes that convey it are able to exist.
THE DAYS OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDONDr. Archdall Reid, in his essay on race supremacy, explains that the evolution of civilised peoples is against disease, and the age of pestilence and plague is passing. This picture of an incident in the greatest plague that has affected London in historical times—in the year 1665—is from the painting by F. W. Topham, R. I.LARGER IMAGE
THE DAYS OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON
Dr. Archdall Reid, in his essay on race supremacy, explains that the evolution of civilised peoples is against disease, and the age of pestilence and plague is passing. This picture of an incident in the greatest plague that has affected London in historical times—in the year 1665—is from the painting by F. W. Topham, R. I.
LARGER IMAGE
All our information indicates the Eastern Hemisphere as the place of origin both of man and of his microbic diseases. Parts of it have been inhabited by a dense and settled population from a time immensely remote. “Behind dim empires ghosts of dimmer empires loom.” Beyond the traces of the oldest civilisations we find evidences of primitive agricultural communities, and far beyond these the remains of the cave-men and hunters of the Stone Age. Even a race of hunters tends to increase faster than the food supply. Doubtless the pressure of population inthe Old World led to the colonisation of the New. But even in the New World there are signs of a civilisation so ancient that some authorities have placed its beginnings as far back as a score or more of thousands of years. With the exception of malaria, it is extremely doubtful whether any zymotic disease existed in the whole of the New World at the time of its discovery by Columbus.
The subject is involved in obscurity; but, while it is evident that the European adventurers introduced many diseases, there is no clear indication that they found and brought back one. Apparently all the diseases which have been prevalent in Europe and America during the last four hundred years were prevalent in the former continent before the fifteenth century. Venereal disease and yellow fever have sometimes been regarded as exceptions. But the former was well known to the Roman physicians, and was common during the Middle Ages. Moreover, the inhabitants of the New World take the disease in a very acute form, and it is not found in remote communities to which Europeans have had no access. Yellow fever was first noted with certainty in the West Indies in the middle of the seventeenth century. The records of the time “tell of the importation of the disease from place to place, and from island to island.”
Origins of Rare Diseases
Not till more than a century later was it observed on the West Coast of Africa. There can be no doubt, however, that the earlier observers confused yellow fever with bilious malaria, and that it was present both in the West Indies and Africa long before a differential diagnosis was made. The fact that of all races negroes are most resistant to the disease would seem to indicate West Africa as the place of origin. In any case, it is certain that, with the exception of malaria, zymotic diseases, if not entirely absent, were extremely rare in the New World.
The Age of Pestilence is Passing
Z
ZYMOTIC disease, then, arose amongst the slowly-growing populations of the Old World. Air and insect borne diseases may have arisen amongst the early hunters and nomads. Similar forms of disease, murrains as they were anciently termed—for example, distemper, rinderpest, the horse sickness in South Africa, the rabbit plague in Northern Canada, and the cattle fever in Texas—occur among lower animals, when these are present in considerable numbers. With the exception of tuberculosis and leprosy, endemic disease was probably almost unknown in the sparsely-peopled ancient world. The facts that air and water borne diseases spread very rapidly, that the illnesses caused by them are comparatively short and sharp, and that recovery is followed by immunity, must have caused rapid exhaustion of the food supply of the microbes. Under such conditions the persistence of the pathogenic species was maintained among the scanty populations by a passage to new and perhaps very distant sources of supply.
Introduced by travellers, or spreading from tribe to tribe, they appeared suddenly in epidemic form as plagues and pestilences, and, disappearing as suddenly, were not known again till a fresh generation furnished a fresh supply of food.
When, however, in spite of war, famine, and pestilence, the human race increased to such an extent that the number of fresh births furnished a perennial supply of food, while at the same time a rising civilisation and improved means of communication lessened the isolation of various communities, then many diseases slowly passed from an epidemic to an endemic form. Pestilence grew rare, but every individual was exposed to infection, and, during youth, either perished from, or acquired immunity against, the more prevalent forms of disease.
Measles a National Scourge
When endemic, zymotic disease—at any rate, disease against which immunity can be acquired—is far less terrible than when epidemic. Modern examples of ancient epidemics may be seen in isolated regions. In Pacific islands, for example, air-borne disease spreads like a flame. The whole community is stricken down. The sick are left untended and perish in multitudes. The entire business of the community is neglected, and famine frequently follows. Under such conditions measles or whooping-cough, diseases which we in England are accustomed to regard as scarcely more than nuisances, may rise to the level of a great national disaster. Thus, in 1749, 30,000 natives perished ofmeasles on the banks of the Amazon. In 1829 half the population died in Astoria. In 1846 measles committed frightful ravages in the Hudson Bay territory. More recently a quarter of the total inhabitants was swept away in the Fiji group of islands.
Sanitation is Sometimes Powerless
At the dawn of history, long after the evolution of zymotic disease, the population of the Eastern Hemisphere was still sparse and scattered. Even as late as the Norman Conquest that of England was barely two millions—about one-third of the number now present in London. Means of communication were poor and beset by dangers. A journey from York to London was then a more serious affair than a journey from London to San Francisco to-day. Water and air borne diseases were, therefore, absent during long periods of time. When they came they spread as epidemics. Accordingly we read of plague and pestilence; of diseases suddenly becoming epidemic and sweeping away a fourth or half of entire communities. Historians are apt to attribute these immense catastrophes partly to the bad sanitation of the period and partly to diseases which have died out of the world, or, at any rate, out of Europe. Doubtless they are right in a few instances. But, apart from diseases which spread under special circumstances from tropical centres, had sanitation, under modern conditions of intercommunication and crowding, tends to render water-borne disease endemic, not epidemic. Over air-borne disease it has no effect. Measles, whooping-cough, chicken-pox, influenza, common cold, and small-pox (in a modified form) are as common as ever.
Plagues “the Wrath of God”
The character of these ancient epidemics, their special symptoms as indicated in old literature, their sudden and portentous appearance, which men attributed to the wrath of God, their tremendous infectivity and rapid spread, their equally sudden and complete departure as of Divine anger assuaged, point rather to air and water borne diseases of the types now endemic and comparatively harmless among us, but still so fearful in their effects on isolated communities. Like the light flashed from a child’s mirror on a darkened wall, so they flickered and swept forwards and backwards from end to end of the Old World—from the Malay Peninsula to the North Cape of Norway, from Kamschatka to the south point of Africa. A parallel may be found in the recent epidemic of rinderpest amongst the herbivorous animals of Africa. Years might pass, old men might remember, the peoples might sacrifice to their gods; but when a fresh generation of those who knew not the disease had arisen, when the harvest of the non-immune was ripe and ready, the diseases would return to the dreadful reaping. Behind them the earth was heaped with the dead, and the few and stricken survivors grubbed for roots to satisfy their hunger. To-day sanitation has nearly abolished water-borne diseases, and, in a population largely immune, epidemics of air-borne disease, like a light thrown on a sunlit wall, are but faint shadows of that which they were in their old days of awful power.
Growth of Resisting Power
The progress of consumption was different; it was never truly epidemic. Owing to its low infectivity, to its lingering nature, to the fact that no immunity could be acquired against it, it did not spread suddenly when first introduced, but when once established its virulence did not abate within measurable time. In other words, it was endemic from the beginning. It made its home in the hovels of the early settlers on the land. In such situations—as in Polynesian villages—modern Englishmen do not take the disease. But their remote ancestors were more susceptible; they could be infected by a smaller dose of the bacilli. Gradually, as civilisation advanced, the conditions grew more stringent; men gathered into larger and denser communities, into hamlets and villages in which they built houses ill lighted and worse ventilated.
With the rise of towns, and ultimately of great cities, the stringency of selection continually increased; and with it, step by step, the resisting power of the race. To-day Englishmen dwell under conditions as impossible to their remote ancestors as to the modern Red Indians. In fact, no race, especially in cold and temperate climates, is now able to achieve civilisation, to dwell in dense communities, unless it has previously undergone evolution against tuberculosis. But of this more anon.
So during the long sweep of the ages microbic diseases strengthened their holdon the inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere, who in turn slowly evolved powers of resistance. In like manner antelopes grew swift and wild sheep active when persecuted by beasts of prey. Then, when the germs of disease were rife in every home and thick on the garments of every man, there occurred the greatest event in human history, the vastest tragedy. Columbus, sailing across an untracked ocean, discovered the Western Hemisphere. The long separation between the inhabitants of the East and West ended. The diseases of the Old World burst with cataclysmal results on the New.
3,500,000 Destroyed by Small-pox
The ancient condition of the Eastern Hemisphere was reproduced in the West. Again we read of plague and pestilence, of water-borne and air-borne diseases coming and going in great epidemics, and of the famines that followed. Measles and cholera piled the earth with the dead. The part played by small-pox was even greater. When taken to the West Indies in 1507 whole tribes were exterminated. A few years later it quite depopulated San Domingo. In Mexico it destroyed three and a half millions of people. Prescott describes this first fearful epidemic as “sweeping over the land like fire over the prairies, smiting down prince and peasant, and leaving its path strewn with the dead bodies of the natives, who—in the strong language of a contemporary—perished in heaps like cattle stricken with murrain.” In 1841 Catlin wrote of the United States: “Thirty millions of white men are now scuffling for the goods and luxuries of life over the bones of twelve millions of red men, six millions of whom have fallen victims to small-pox.”
But the principal part was played by tuberculosis. Air-borne and water-borne diseases generally left an immune remnant, but against tuberculosis no immunity could be acquired. Red Indians and Caribs could not in a few generations achieve an evolution which the inhabitants of the Old World had accomplished only after thousands of years, and at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives. Civilisation, which implies a dense and settled community with cities and towns, had suddenly become a necessity, but remained an impossibility to all the inhabitants of the temperate parts of the West. It is a highly significant fact that throughout the New World no city or town has its native quarter, whereas every European settlement in Asia and Africa has its native suburbs. The aborigines of the New World are found only in remote or inaccessible parts.
A Plague that Spread like Fire
The following is an example of the manner in which tuberculosis went to work: “The tribe of Hapaa is said to have numbered some four hundred when the smallpox came and reduced them by one-fourth. Six months later, a woman developed tubercular consumption; the disease spread like fire about the valley, and in less than a year two survivors, a man and a woman, fled from the newly-created solitude.... Early in the year of my visit, for example, or late in the year before, a first case of phthisis appeared in a household of seventeen persons, and by the end of August, when the tale was told to me, one soul survived, a boy who had been absent on his schooling.”
The Caribs of the West Indies are almost extinct. The Red Indians are going fast, as are the aborigines of cold and temperate South America. The Tasmanians have gone. The Australians and the Maoris are but a dwindling remnant. As surely as the trader with his clothes, or the missionary with his church and schoolroom appears, the work of extermination begins on Polynesian islands. Throughout the whole vast extent of the New World the only pure aborigines who seem destined to persist are those which live remote in mountains or in the depths of fever-haunted forests, where the white man is unable to build the towns and cities with which he has studded the cooler and more “healthy” regions of the north and south.
Races that Decline before the Whites
Many explanations, or pseudo-explanations, have been offered to account for the disappearance of the natives. We are told that they cannot endure “domestication,” that they “pine like caged eagles” in confinement, that the change produced by civilisation makes them infertile, as the change produced by captivity makes some wild animals infertile, and so forth. But the only peoples who are disappearing are those of the New World, some of whom were by no means savage. In Asia and Africa are many tribes far lower in the scale of civilisation who have persisted in constant communication with dense andsettled communities from time immemorial. Notwithstanding all that has been written, the people of the New World do not wither away mysteriously when brought into contact with the white man. They die as other men do of violence, or famine, or old age, or disease. But deaths from all these causes, except the last, are now comparatively rare amongst them—much rarer than formerly during the time of their perpetual wars. The vast majority die of imported diseases—exactly the same diseases as white men die of. But their mortality is invariably much higher than that of white men, and they perish on an average at a younger age.
THE EVE OF “THE VASTEST TRAGEDY IN HISTORY”: COLUMBUS SIGHTING AMERICA“The greatest event and the vastest tragedy in human history” is Dr. Archdall Reid’s striking description of the discovery of America by Columbus. It ended the long separation between the inhabitants of East and West, and the diseases of the Old World burst with cataclysmal results upon the New. The picture, by George Harvey, shows Columbus approaching America, his rebellious crew pleading for pardon.
THE EVE OF “THE VASTEST TRAGEDY IN HISTORY”: COLUMBUS SIGHTING AMERICA
“The greatest event and the vastest tragedy in human history” is Dr. Archdall Reid’s striking description of the discovery of America by Columbus. It ended the long separation between the inhabitants of East and West, and the diseases of the Old World burst with cataclysmal results upon the New. The picture, by George Harvey, shows Columbus approaching America, his rebellious crew pleading for pardon.
All this is not mere hypothesis. It can be proved by reference to carefully collected and tabulated statistics published by every department of Public Health in America, Australasia, and Polynesia. The cause of the sterility cannot be demonstrated with the same precision; but it is hardly necessary to invent fanciful causes when a reasonable one is to hand. The high mortality indicates a high sick-rate, and presumably illness is as much a cause of sterility in the New World as in the Old, among savages as among civilised people.
The Spanish conquest of the West Indies was followed by the swift disappearance of the natives. To that end the Spaniards unconsciously adopted the most effectual means possible. They satisfied their greed by forcing the natives to labour in plantations and in mines, and their religious enthusiasm by compelling attendance in churches and cathedrals. In other words, they placed the natives under conditions the most favourable for acquiring the diseases which they imported by every vessel. When the native population dwindled, it was replaced by negro slaves from West Africa.
Africans Die in our Civilisation
The history of negro migrations is extremely interesting and illuminating. There are no accounts of negro conquest outside the limits of Africa, but from very ancient times a constant stream of slaveshas passed to Southern Europe and Asia, where they have been employed mainly in domestic service, and in more modern times to America, where their occupation has been mainly agricultural. The invasion of Asia has continued to our own day. But one may search from Spain to the Malay peninsula and, except in recent importations, find scarcely a trace of a negro ancestry. Yet slaves, like cattle, are valuable property, more cheaply bred than imported. In Eastern countries they have often been kindly treated, and many have attained to wealth and power. Like the African soldiers in Ceylon, of whom it is recorded that, though many thousands were imported by the Dutch and English, hardly a descendant survives, all perished in a few generations, the elimination of the unfit being so stringent as to cause extinction, not evolution. A permanent colony of native Africans in the midst of an ancient consumption-infested civilisation is impossible.
Fate of Natives of America
The fate of the negro migrations into America has been different. The race had undergone some evolution against consumption in Africa, and, therefore, was more resistant than the vanishing aborigines. In its new home, employed in agriculture in a hot climate where white men and tubercle bacilli, also recent importations, were as yet few in numbers, it was placed under the best conditions possible. Gradually, as the stringency of selection waxed, it evolved resisting power. To-day, American negroes are able to dwell even in Northern cities, though it is said “every other adult negro dies of consumption.” After the discovery of America the principal maritime races of Western Europe competed for its possession. Spain and Portugal, then powerful nations, had the first start in the race, and chose the seemingly richer tropics. But the forests of the centre and south were defended by malaria, which raised a barrier against immigration, and by heat and light, which raised a barrier against tuberculosis. Moreover, the Spaniards and the Portuguese intermarried freely with the aborigines, and the mixed race which resulted inherits in half measure the resisting power of both stocks. At the present day this mixed race, with a leavening of mulattoes, pure Spaniards, Portuguese, and negroes, inhabits the cities and more civilised parts. Even in tropical America the pure aborigines are found, speaking generally, only beyond the verge of civilisation. Farther south the disappearance of the natives has been more complete, and the cooler, healthier, and more open pampas are settled by a race more purely European.
Expansion of the Anglo-Saxon
T
THE weaker British and French were shouldered into the seemingly inhospitable north. But the British won the battle of Quebec, and the French immigration soon ceased. That little fight is half forgotten, but it is doubtful if any battle in history had results half so important. It placed all North America in the grasp of the Anglo-Saxon, and gave his race enormous space for expansion. Unchecked by malaria, the new-comers gathered into communities and built towns and cities such as those which across the Atlantic were the homes of tuberculosis. The cold forced them to admit little air and light into their dwellings. The aborigines melted away from the borders of the settlements. Under the conditions there was little intermarriage. In that climate Indian women, and even half-caste children, could not exist within stone walls. The few white men who took native wives preserved them only while living a wild life remote from their kin.
The British conquest of North America and Australasia resembles the Saxon conquest of Great Britain. The natives have been exterminated within the area of settlement. It is in sharp contrast to their conquests in Asia and Africa. Both in the Old World and in the New the subjugation of the natives was accompanied by many wars and much bloodshed, and probably the conflicts in the former were more prolonged and destructive than those in the latter. But in no part of the Old World have the British exterminated the natives. They do not supplant them; they merely govern them. Southern Asia and East and West Africa are defended by malaria. The British cannot colonise them, and the natives have undergone such evolution against tuberculosis thatthey are capable of resisting the hard conditions imposed by modern civilisation. In South Africa, where there is little malaria, Europeans share the land with the natives, but the latter are likely to remain in an overwhelming majority.
WHERE THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE OBTAINED POSSESSION OF NORTH AMERICAOn the Plains of Abraham, outside Quebec, the British and French troops fought in 1759, and the battle placed all North America in the grasp of the Anglo-Saxon, giving his race enormous space for expansion. It is doubtful, says Dr. Archdall Reid, if any battle in history had results half so important as this, although it is half forgotten.
WHERE THE ANGLO-SAXON RACE OBTAINED POSSESSION OF NORTH AMERICA
On the Plains of Abraham, outside Quebec, the British and French troops fought in 1759, and the battle placed all North America in the grasp of the Anglo-Saxon, giving his race enormous space for expansion. It is doubtful, says Dr. Archdall Reid, if any battle in history had results half so important as this, although it is half forgotten.
If history teaches any lesson with clearness it is this—that conquest, to be permanent, must be accompanied with extermination, otherwise in the fulness of time the natives expel or absorb the conquerors. The Saxon conquest of England was permanent; of the Norman conquest there remains scarcely a trace. The Huns and the Franks founded permanent empires in Europe; the Roman Empire, and that of the Saracens in Spain, soon tumbled into ruins. It is highly improbable, therefore, that the British will retain their hold on their Old World dependencies. A handful of aliens cannot for ever keep in subjugation large and increasing races that yearly become more intelligent and insistent in their demands for self-government. But no probable conjunction of circumstances can be thought of that will uproot the Anglo-Saxons from their wide possession in the New World. The wars of extermination are ceasing with the spread of civilisation. We have ransacked the world, and now know every important disease. Diseases cannot come to us as they came to our forefathers and to the Red Indians, like visitations from on high. All the diseases that are capable of travelling have very nearly reached their limits; the rest we are able to check. Even in the unlikely event of a new disease arising, it would affect other races equally. Canada and Australasia, like the United States, may separate from the parent stem, but the race will persist. If ever a New Zealander broods over the ruins of London, he will be of British descent.
The Natural History of Mankind
The natural history of man is, in effect, a history of his evolution against disease. The story unfolded by it is of greater proportions than all the mass of trivial gossip about kings and queens and the accounts of futile dynastic wars and stupid religious controversies which fill so large a space in his written political history. In the latter, as told by historians, groping in obscurity and blinded by their own preconceptions, men and events are often distorted out of all proportions. A clever but prejudiced writer may pass base metal into perpetual circulation as gold. Luther and the Reformation are accepted as Divine by many people; they are reviled as diabolical by more.Cromwell was long regarded as accursed; to-day he is half-deified. How many of us are able to decide, on grounds of fact, not of fiction, whether the Roman Empire perished because the Romans, becoming luxurious, sinned against our moral code, as ecclesiastic historians would have us believe, or because a disease of intolerance and stupidity clouded the clear Roman brain and enfeebled the strong Roman hand, as Gibbon would have us think? But the natural history of man deals, without obscurity and without uncertainty, with greater matters. Study it, and the mists clear away from much even of political history. We see clearly how little the conscious efforts of man have influenced his destiny. We see forces unrecognised, enormous, uncontrolled, uncontrollable, working slowly but mightily towards tremendous conclusions—forces so irresistible and unchanging that, watching them, we are able even to forecast something of the future.
The mere political results of man’s evolution against disease are of almost incalculable magnitude. The human races of one half of the world are dying, and are being replaced by races from the other half. Not all the wars of all time taken together constitute so great a tragedy. A quite disproportionate part in this great movement has been borne by our own race. It has seized on the larger part of those regions in which the aborigines were incapable of civilisation, because incapable of resisting consumption, and were undefended by malaria. In the void created by disease it has more room to spread and multiply than any other race.
Disease Mightier than the Sword
Other races may dream of foreign conquests, but the time for founding permanent empires is past. There remains for them only temporary conquest, in a few malarious parts of the world in which Europeans cannot flourish and supplant the natives. Spain and Portugal lost their opportunity when they turned from the temperate regions and chose the tropics. France lost her opportunity on the Heights of Abraham. Germany is more than a century too late in the start. Russia can conquer only hardy aliens who will multiply under her rule and ultimately assert their supremacy. In times now far remote in the history of civilised peoples, the sword was the principal means for digging deep the foundations of permanent empires. Its place was taken by a more efficient instrument. A migrating race, armed with a new and deadly disease, and with high powers of resisting it, possesses a terrible weapon of offence. But now disease has spread over the whole world and so is losing its power of building empires. The long era of the great migrations of the human race, of the great conquests, is closing fast.
Possibilities of the Black Races
It is generally supposed by historians and others that races that disappear before the march of civilisation are mentally unfitted for it. The assumption is not supported by an iota of real evidence. To be mentally incapable a race must be of very defective memory. Recently a school of Australian natives, who belong to one of the “lowest” of races, took the first place in the colony. Negroes occupy a very inferior position in America, especially in Anglo-Saxon territories. But they are stamped by glaring physical differences, are treated with great contempt and jealousy by the whites, and their acquired mental attitudes, therefore, do not develop under good conditions. It is very possible that they are mentally inferior to the whites; but not so inferior as is commonly believed.
Russian peasants, though not sharply differentiated by physical peculiarities from the governing classes, are equally scorned by them, and show a mental development hardly, if at all, superior to the negroes of United States. The Latins of South America seem very incapable of orderly government, but they are the heirs of a civilisation older than our own. At any rate, while it is conceivable the American negroes and some other races are incapable of building up a highly-enlightened society by their own efforts, it is manifest that they are able to persist and multiply when civilised conditions are imposed on them. Not so the aborigines of the New World, some of whom—for example, the Maoris and the Polynesians—are admittedly of good mental type. They perish swiftly and helplessly ofbodilyailments.
Very clearly, then, human races are capable or incapable of civilisation, not because they are mentally, but because they are physically, fit or unfit.
G. ARCHDALLREID